Northern Re-Exposure
by jacik
Summary: Charlie has a lot of misconceptions about Don's past. Some of them were due to deliberate misdirection on Don's part.
1. Chapter 1

Northern Re-Exposure

Fandoms: Numb3rs x Northern Exposure

Genre: Action, Family

Rating: K+

Setting: Numb3rs season 3ish; takes place in Cecily, Alaska

POV: Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes

Pairing: Don Eppes/Maggie O'Connell

Disclaimer: The various TV properties belong to their production companies. I only own the plot and the bad guys (or what's left of them.) Forgive me any huge (Alaska-sized) geography mistakes; I've never been there. This plot is sort of cracky; what did you expect from a Northern Exposure crossover?

Preface: Charlie has a lot of misconceptions about Don's past. Some of them were due to deliberate misdirection on Don's part.

***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************

Chapter 1: Latent Image

Don looked out the airplane window curiously. Juno, Alaska. The small regional airport had changed very little in ten years. Despite the increasing influence of technology on the rest of the country, the few runways still butted up against forest, their area hardly distinct from the clearing that described the moderately sized town that passed for Alaska's largest city; and as the plane dipped for its landing Don's heart rose in his throat the same way it had when he had first experienced a small passenger jet aiming for those almost obscured runways. Just you wait, he reminded himself. The next leg of the journey would be even more adrenaline-raising.

Twenty minutes later, he was arguing with a charter plane scheduler and trying his best not to think about the size of the craft he was requesting. "Look here," he said, holding a slip of paper up. "It says here that I've booked a four o'clock flight. P.m., not a.m. Today, not tomorrow. What's the hold-up?" He could feel the frustration rising in his voice.

The old man shrugged. "I'd be happy to get you in the air right away," he said.

"Okay."

"Unfortunately," he added, "You'd be going without your plane. She's not in yet from her last run."

"Oh." The man's point took the bluster out of Don's sails. "Well, do you have any idea what time you can expect—" he was cut off by the loud sound of a small aircraft on approach.

"Yup," the man shouted over it. "That'll be her now."

Don gave a startled nod and followed the old man out of the cramped hanger office. A small Cesna was taxiing up, and Don felt the same claustrophobic feeling all over again. Was he really going to put himself through that again? Don stayed a pace behind out of respect for the old man's business as they approached the small craft. He'd probably have some catch-up work to do with the pilot; reports to log, that sort of thing. Don found his attention wandering back to the bright Alaskan day as he waited; and then it snapped abruptly back.

"Joel?"

"Maggie!"

The pilot, a diminutive brown-haired female, all five-foot-five of her, wrapped in the same (or nearly the same) fur-lined parka, sliding the bulky noise-cancelling headphones off her head and tossing them back into the seat of her plane, where she hung, one foot still on the landing strut, turned towards him. Maggie; product of Cecily, Alaska; the last person he had expected to see until he reached the tiny town.

"Joel Fleishman," she said again, climbing down and extending a hand. She was smiling, but sizing him up. "You colored your hair."

Don choked back a snort. "Uh." He'd thought about how to explain things to her if she was still in Cecily, but when you were actually in Maggie O'Connell's presence, words had a tendency to disavail themselves. "Uh, I go by Don now," he said, ignoring the perplexed look the old man was delivering. "But you—you look great." A gesture waved itself at her helplessly, acknowledging the fact that somehow or other, Maggie O'Connell, Cecily's premiere bush pilot, had failed to appreciably age. He followed her quick strides back to the hanger, feeling a little stunned and completely off-balance. O'Connell was as purposeful as he remembered.

Ten minutes later they were in the front seat of the re-fueled Cessna, watching the Alaskan town drop away beneath them. "So, Fleishman," she called out over the roar of the engine into the radio headset he was wearing, "what made you decide to come back? Not money, I'm guessing." Her rolled eye implied she thought New York must have done rather well by him.

The suit. Why had he worn it, again? Bad idea.

"Yeah," he said, "like I said. I don't go by Joel Fleishman anymore. Everybody calls me Don Eppes." Which made sense; that was, after all, his real name.

"Clean break with the past. That's ridiculous." Maggie shook her head. "Are you going to walk into Cecily and tell everybody that? Besides," she added, "you didn't answer my question."

She had a point. "Okay," he said. "I'm here on a case."

Maggie gave him a brief eyebrow raise. "Cecily's still a small town. If anybody needed a specialist, I'd know about it. If you are a specialist."

Don tilted his head in a nod and pulled out his I.D. "Nope," he said. "F.B.I. agent now." Just like I was then. Just like I was in Albuquerque for those few short months before all the years in Witness Protection. "I've got a case, all right, but it isn't one I can talk about."

O'Connell gave a whistle. "Wait 'til Maurice sees that," she laughed.

"Really? The old buzzard is still in charge of the town?" Don laughed.

"In name only," Maggie replied. "He spends winters in Florida now. But he's still going to turn green with envy when he sees you're an agent of the Federal government." She shook her head. "I can't believe you went into law enforcement." She gave him a sudden shrewd look as the plane dipped into the wind. "You didn't murder an F.B.I. agent and steal his badge, did you?"

Don choked again. "No! My picture's on that card, isn't it?"

***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************

Don was glad he'd made the decision not to try to convince the whole town of Cecily that his name wasn't Joel Fleishman anymore. Too many people still recognized him. There was Holling and Marilyn, and Chris-in-the-Morning of course, and Phil, his replacement, even remembered him. He'd had to explain certain things to Maurice, of course; the old land developer would have nosed into the whole thing anyway. Maurice had looked at his F.B.I. credentials like his photo had grown a second head. "I had to do some time," Don had explained, "in a Witness Protection program, and I had to change my name."

Maurice had looked up from the card he was still fingering. "Witness Protection convinced you that you wanted to join the Bureau?"

"Hey," Don had joked, "maybe I remembered what a great job Cecily was doing in law enforcement."

"Still," Maurice had mused, "shame about all that money our state shilled out for your education."

"Oh, I don't know," Don had said. "I like to think my years here repaid at least a part of that debt."

***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************

Despite the fact that almost everyone in Cecily knew him and greeted him as Doctor Fleishman, Don found that, easy as it might have felt to slip into the old role, he was much too busy to do so. At any given moment, for the next three days, he was either poring over Sherriff's Office reports, or examining maps and tracing routes flown over by the Anchorage F.B.I. helicopter—there was only one available for three hundred square miles of mountains—or on the phone with Colby or Liz back in L.A. piecing together another lead for a manhunt he was beginning to feel was an impossible task. Anybody could disappear up here—heck, he'd done it himself. He even broke down and called Ian Edgerton, tracker extraordinaire, who had offered helpful advice but said he was on his way to a hunt in the Florida Panhandle for a Federal prison escapee. Otherwise, he'd be happy to spend a few weeks in the Alaskan mountains. "But hey," he'd said, "what you really need right now isn't me; it's better intel. Have you thought about calling your brother in on this one?"

Edgerton was right, of course. Don knew he'd been avoiding the idea of bringing Charlie in on the case. He could trust Charlie—tell him anything; but even the generous-spirited mathematician would be justified if he were angry at a five year lie kept secret for so long. Maybe Charlie would never forgive him; worse, maybe he would never trust him again; and Dad… Dad would find out.

In the final equation, there was never any question. Don needed Charlie's help, and so Charlie came.

***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************

Don met Charlie at the airport in Anchorage, a little tired from his own flight the night before, surprised at how fresh Charlie looked after six hours in a cramped economy-class seat. "Good flight, I take it?" Don asked, two cups of coffee in his hands as he met his brother inside the terminal.

"It was great, actually," a buoyant-looking Charlie said, reaching for the outstretched cup. "I had no idea the Pacific northwest was so interesting from the air. Have you seen how many mountains there actually are?" Charlie was beginning to babble, and Don cut him off while steering him out of the gate area.

"Oh, yeah, Charlie, I have." Several times, actually, he added silently. "Say, Chuck. How about a little breakfast?"

Charlie was beaming so hard he ignored the nickname completely. "Sure, Don. I'm starving."

"Ok," Don replied. "there's a McDonald's on the other end of the terminal." Don led the way, with Charlie rolling his suitcase in tow, and ten minutes later they were both seated at the tiny fast-food chain table-for-two, Charlie eating pancakes and Don working his way through an egg McMuffin.

"So," Charlie started, "you were telling me about the case. You said there was stuff you didn't want to tell me over the phone?"

"Ok, yeah," Don replied, a little reticently, not sure if his brother had picked up on the fact that proximity to evidence gathering was not the only reason he had flown Charlie all the way out to Alaska on the government's dime. "You know I've been on this fugitive case for over a week now."

"Right," Charlie agreed. "And you've got a series of credit card thefts that point to some place in northern Alaska."

"Mm hmm." Don suddenly found it necessary to slow the conversation down with a large bite of muffin. How much was he really ready to spill? How much could he avoid? "Look," he said, clearing his throat and swallowing, "the credit card transactions stopped in Juno," he admitted. "Although one of the local bus lines thinks they recognized him on a fare going north."

Charlie nodded. "Why Cicely?" he asked, entirely without suspicion. "I looked it up on a map; it's really out of the way."

Don shrugged. "Call it a hunch." He finished the sandwich. "I'd like you to take a look at all the evidence; see if you come to the same conclusion."

"Sure, Don." Charlie was looking at him a little strangely. "But there's got to be some reason you think this guy's reading for an Alaskan town with less than a thousand people in it."

Don felt a little bit like an insect being examined under a strong desk lamp. Oh yeah, Charlie, there is. He gulped his coffee and cleared his throat, still wildly unsure, yet knowing Charlie would have to know if he wanted his help on the case. "Remember when I was doing fugitive recovery full time?" he asked.

The tangent made Charlie draw up in confusion. "Yeah. I mean, Mom and Dad barely heard anything from you in almost six years, so that part sticks out I guess."

Don winced. Despite all that had happened recently to patch up his relationship with Charlie, his past—what they thought was his past—was still a sore point in the family. "I wasn't in fugitive recovery," Don said.

"What?" Charlie was staring at him like he just landed from another planet. "You weren't?"

"Not all of that time, anyway," Don rushed. "I was at first; for the first six months. Then I put this mob boss's son in prison on a life sentence, and then I was in Witness Protection for the rest of that time. The Bureau got some very specific threats."

Charlie's eyes were round like saucers. "They were going to kill you?"

"If I testified," Don said. "Which I did. I spent most of those six years living under an assumed name in Cicely, Alaska."

Charlie's head cocked sideways. "This fugitive—he wouldn't happen to be the mob boss's son, would he?"

"Yep," Don said. "Escaped from Federal prison two weeks ago. We think he's tracing some very old leads."

"Looking for you?" Charlie breathed, seemingly having forgotten the stunning news of Don's secret in this new development.

Don let out a guarded sigh. "It looks that way. But if he doesn't know I'm working for the L.A. office, then he also doesn't know I'm looking for him."

"Good." Charlie swigged his own coffee, then fidgeted with the cup. "Don," he asked, not looking up from it, "I think I get why you couldn't tell Mom and Dad where you were at the time, and why you didn't write very often. But—" and now Charlie's large very brown eyes were raised and locked on Don's—"why didn't you tell us after you came home?"

Yep, there it was, just as he'd been afraid of, in Charlies eyes; the hurt, the suspicion, the wondering what other secrets his brother was holding; whether he actually knew his brother. Whether he could really trust him. Suddenly, Don's own coffee cup seemed to hold all of his attention.

"I don't know," he said, finally.

"Six years… that's an awfully long time to keep hidden," Charlie said, his eyes starting to flash.

"It's an awfully long time to have to explain," Don said, defensively. "Dad would have been angry; Mom would have been upset and afraid. Mom was already in chemo when I came back. I didn't know what to do. The longer I waited, the more ridiculous the idea of explaining any of it seemed."

Charlie had suddenly gone gray. "I didn't know Mom was already in chemo when you came back. You went to Quantico then."

"Yeah, to teach."

Charlie looked guilty, not accusing, and Don was sure he knew what Charlie was thinking. Charlie had been there; Charlie had been brand new at CalSci, but he had been oblivious, wrapped up in his own world before the prognosis had worsened and Don had moved closer, first to Albuquerque and then home to L.A.

Don shook his head. "They didn't want to tell you," he said, "not until things got bad. They didn't want you to worry when your life as a professor was just starting out. Mom and Dad—they were handling it okay." He hoped his words were comforting, and in fact Charlie seemed to take some comfort in them, because he relaxed a little.

"Don," he asked, "what other secrets has this family been keeping from each other?" The question was half rhetorical, half serious.

Don suppressed a hysterical laugh. Well, there was still the one other big one. He sidestepped that topic, not yet ready to broach it. "I know you set my hamster on fire," he suggested. "Even though you never admitted it."

"Don," Charlie rolled his eyes, "that hardly qualifies."

"Okay," Don said, sobering. "Look, buddy, you're coming with me to a tiny Alaskan town to help me catch a crazed, revenge-bent criminal, right?"

"Right."

"A town which is my stomping grounds. Or at least was for six years."

"Okay."

"Don't be surprised if a lot of people recognize me. A lot of the same people still live there."

"Okay." Charlie obviously couldn't see where he was going with this, genius brain or no.

Don continued. "Like I told you, I lived there under an assumed name, Joel Fleishman. Most people still know me as that. I haven't disabused them of that."

"Fine," Charlie said, conspiratorially. "Fleishman it is."

Now for the hard part. "Actually, it's Dr. Fleishman."

Charlie sat bolt upright. "Don. You didn't impersonate a…"

"No," Don said firmly. "I didn't have to. I went to medical school."

The last secret was out.

"Don, you're messing with me."

Don crossed his arms. "No, actually, I'm not. Although that's exactly the reaction I would have gotten at the time if I'd announced my intention. The FBI paid my way while I was at Quantico the first time. I was going to be a forensic pathologist for the Bureau."

Charlie still looked completely stunned, unsure whether or not to believe him. "What happened?"

"I had a guaranteed slot in this internship that got pushed back a year," Don said, shrugging. "I was already working part time as a field agent in Virginia, so I took a transfer to do fugitive recovery while I waited. Then—" he waved a hand in an explanatory gesture—"everything happened, and I wound up in Alaska."

"Practicing medicine?" Charlie asked, eyebrows raised.

"Of a sort," Don said. "Small town family practice stuff. I wasn't very prepared for it, honestly."

"Okay, two obvious questions," Charlie countered. "First, why in the world did we not know about this, and second, why are you working as an FBI agent and not making tons of money as a doctor in L.A.?"

"Couldn't come up with a hard question, could you, Chuck?" Don ribbed, gently. "First one: I didn't tell you guys 'cuz it was something I had to do for myself, okay? I mean," he added, "everybody knew you were a genius, and headed for great things, and I was just the average older brother who was okay with sports and should probably have stuck to that. But you know what," he said, watching his younger brother, who looked pained, as if maybe he remembered the quiet comparisons and assumptions that had floated around them in their shared childhood, "average can get you through medical school."

"And the other?"

"Easier." Well, sort of, if he discounted all the memories that still pulled at him—memories that had been part of the reason he had decided to make a clean break at the time; O'Connell rose sharply to his mind. O'Connell, and the way she had smelled that day in the hay. "I was a good doctor, but a better field agent."

"Okay," Charlie said, accepting the statement at face value. Accepting him, Don thought, gratefully. Not all secrets needed to be revealed; or, at least not all at once. Charlie would have the opportunity to meet Maggie O'Connell in due time; if he figured that out—well, there were still some possibilities Don wanted to figure out himself.

"We should probably get moving if we're going to catch your would-be assassin in Cicely, Dr. Fleishman," Charlie teased.

Don laughed and rose from the table. Charlie followed suit. "Hey. Does this mean you can write prescriptions? I've been meaning to see somebody about this wart on my left big toe…"

"Oh, no," Don broke into a run, laughing. "And you asked me why I never told anyone…"

***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Landscape and Portrait

N.B.:

There's an homage to a lovely little story called "Merry Christmas, Dr. Fleishman" by Isis in this chapter.

I just watched NE Season 5 and it's making continuing this story a bit harder… forgive me for going slightly AU. For one thing, we will have to ignore the fact that Joel's parents visited Cicely in Season 5.

******Numb3rs******

Charlie stepped off of the coach behind his brother and breathed the cool Alaskan air in. "This is Cicely?"

"This is Cicely," Don agreed, noting the combination of appreciation and wonder in his little brother's tone. Don pointed to the cluster of buildings ahead of them. "Come on, I'll show you around."

"Okay." Charlie hurried after Don, whose long, sure strides bespoke familiarity with his environment. Charlie quickly counted up the buildings that appeared to make up the town's main settlement; _only ten, and Don-worldly, urban Don-had survived here for almost six years?!_

Don stopped in the single main street that cut through them and pointed. "That's the store-also the post office, last I checked-there's the library, radio station-yes, there is one-Holling's house; Holling's bar; the clinic, and O'Connell's house-that's where we're staying. But we should go to Holling's bar first."

"Why?" Charlie asked.

"Because it's the easiest place to find people," Don replied. "I want to show you off. Come on."

"Okay…" Charlie was beginning to feel about like he had in the third grade: Don's tag-along little brother; good for show-and-tell, but the usefulness wore thin quickly.

The Brick was surprisingly full and in fact did seem to be a thriving restaurant. Don sidled up to the counter, hands in pockets, and Charlie followed behind. "Hi, Holling," Don said to the man behind the bar. "Seen O'Connell?"

"Uh huh," the man said, nodding, while wiping a glass with a dishrag. "Pretty sure she said she was going over to Doctor Billings' to help Ruth-Anne get home. Her arthritis is something awful these days."

"Oh?" Don said, politely. "Holling, you should meet my brother, Charlie. Charlie, this is Holling Vincoeur. He and his wife Shelley run the best restaurant in town. Holling, Charlie Eppes."

Holling reached out a hand. "Still the only restaurant in town, Joel," he added, then turned to Charlie. "How do you do?"

Charlie shook the hand. "Fine, thank you, Mr. Vincoeur."

"Please, it's Holling," the man grinned. "We're all pretty laid back around here."

"Sure thing, Holling."

"Right," Don said. "Listen. We'll just go see if we can't catch O'Connell. You tell Shelley I said 'hi'."

"Okay, sure." Holling waved them out.

"That takes care of that," Don said as the door jingled shut behind them.

"Takes care of what?" Charlie asked.

"Holling will tell Shelley about you, and the whole town will know who you are by tomorrow afternoon. Come on. I gotta find O'Connell."

"Who's O'Connell?" Charlie asked, following his brother's brisk pace once more. For some reason Don didn't bother to answer, but he stopped outside the little town clinic and ran his finger across the hand-written letters on the window. "They've gone through about three physicians since I was here," he commented with a shake of his head.

Charlie still couldn't believe that the window, which now read 'Patrick Billings, MD', had once read his brother's name, even if that name had been 'Joel Fleischman'. It was hard to picture.

Inside, Don seemed instantly ill at ease. _Was it due to some odd mixture of familiarity and change? Or maybe, a feeling that he didn't belong here anymore?_ Charlie watched his brother cast a sharp eye around the place. A heavy-set Native American woman looked up from behind the front desk. "Twenty minute wait," she announced with preternatural calm, ignoring the stares of the other five patients-in-waiting who, Charlie thought, were probably wondering if they would all be seen somewhere in those twenty minutes.

"That's okay, Marilyn," Don said, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm just looking for Maggie. Have you seen her?"

The woman nodded.

"Where is she?"

"Out back."

"Okay. Thank you, Marilyn." Don gave the taciturn woman's arm a pat and turned.

"Your brother Charlie is very handsome," she called after them.

Charlie watched Don turn beet-red. "Uh, sorry. Charlie, this is Marilyn. Marilyn, you obviously already know this is Charlie."

"Ed told me," she murmured.

"Hi," Charlie said weakly, hoping she wasn't going to pat his curls.

"Sorry, we have to run," Don said, steering Charlie out of the danger zone. "We need to find O'Connell."

"'Bye, Joel."

Don led Charlie out the door and around the building. "How did she know," Charlie started.

"News travels fast," Don said, by way of non-explanation. "Oh, good. There's O'Connell."

The object of Don's search was buried up to her elbows in the engine bay of a large, green pick-up truck. She lifted her head when he called out her name. "Hey, O'Connell!"

"Hey, Fleischman," she retorted, reaching for a rag to wipe her hands off with. "I see you brought Charlie with you."

A look of mystified confusion crossed Don's face. "How did…"

"Ruth-Anne told me."

"Just before she told Ed. Right." Don cleared his throat. "Well, anyway, introductions may be superfluous on one side, but Charlie, this is Maggie O'Connell. We're staying at her place. O'Connell, this is my brother, Charlie Eppes."

Maggie shook Charlie's outstretched hand warmly. "Oh," she said to Don, an odd spark in her eye. "This explains the name," she said with a knowing smirk. "I'll bet you guys will be wanting to share a room, won't you? Which is good, because I only have the one spare bedroom. Just don't let Maurice catch on. You know how he is about that sort of thing…"

"One bedroom or two, it really doesn't matter, O'Connell," Don cut her off before Charlie got any more bewildered. "We're just here to work on the case."

"Sure, Fleischman," O'Connell said. "Well, you've still got my spare key, and you can help yourself to whatever blankets and pillows you need. I've got to make a run to Anchorage tonight, and won't be back until late, assuming this truck gets me out to the airfield and back."

"Need a lift?" Don asked, left eyebrow quirking upwards.

Maggie O'Connell shook her head. "Nope. Just a few more minutes of elbow grease here. I think the carburetor is trying to die, but I refuse to let it. Ruth-Anne should be done with her appointment soon, and I promised to run her home."

"Okay," Don said, turning to go. "Call me if you get stuck somewhere, including tonight. Even if it's late. I usually hear my phone ring."

Charlie nodded, knowing Don was right; he had to, for his job. He could be called out any time of day or night, when he was on duty. Maggie simply smiled and re-buried herself in her engine.

"What was that about?" Charlie queried, as they once more found themselves striding down Main Street in the afternoon sun.

"What was what about?" Don responded.

Charlie threw a side-glance at his brother to see if he was teasing him with his implied innocence of the question; but no-rather, Don was oddly impassive.

"You know," Charlie replied. "The whole 'one bedroom or two' thing. Does Maggie think you're…"

"O'Connell always jumps to conclusions," Don said firmly. "It's in her nature, I think."

"Oh." Charlie raised an eyebrow and waited, but Don didn't elaborate, and Charlie went on. "Another thing… why do you always call each other by your last names?"

Don smiled. "I dunno, Charlie. We just always do. Look," he added, "this is O'Connell's place. We're staying in the basement apartment."

"The one-bedroom basement apartment," Charlie added, with a smirk.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I was already planning to stake out the couch."

He let them in the front door, leading Charlie through a neat, no-nonsense living room, inhabited by comfortable furniture and throw rugs, to a hallway closet. "Here," Don said, shoving a tall stack of quilts at Charlie. "It gets really cold at night."

Charlie's eyebrows went up. "Don, if you could carry some of these…? I've got this suitcase…"

"Sorry, buddy." Don was dragging out his own stack of sheets, blankets and pillows. "I gotta make the couch up." He led the way back through the house, then outside and around to the little basement stoop which led down into the downstairs one-bedroom.

As Don had said, there was a green pull-out sofa, with a coffee table; a kitchenette, complete with microwave, and the queen-size bed and dresser in the otherwise unfurnished bedroom, with a tiny bathroom attached. Charlie set the blankets on the bed and came back out to watch his brother deal with the couch. "I'm pretty sure that's a hideaway," he said, watching Don carefully tuck a sheet in around the the cushions.

"It is," Don agreed, "but if you knew how old the springs were you'd know why I'm not sleeping on it like that."

Charlie watched Don finish spreading out the blankets. When he was done, he sat down heavily into the made-up sofa. "C'mere, let me show you the files," he said, laying the contents of a couple of folders out on the glass coffee table.

"Okay." Charlie sat down next to him and peered at them.

"This guy," Don said, stabbing a finger at a glossy mugshot of a young-looking Italian in jeans and wife-beater, who was trying very hard to look disinterested, "is the guy we're after. This here's his father."

"Uh huh." Charlie picked up both photos for a moment. The other picture was a newspaper clipping labelled 'Giancarlo Vincetti Receives Mayor's Award for Business". The person in question, despite being heavier-set, did bear a striking resemblance to the kid in the mugshot.

"Giancarlo Vincetti, Junior." Don answered the unasked question. "Although when I knew him, everyone called him The Pup. Fairly derogatory, and probably part of the reason he was trying so hard to prove himself in his father's organization."

Charlie was flipping through the stack of papers in the file that went with drug deals, extortion cases, kidnappings, and a number of cases where people simply disappeared. "Don, this stuff is all ten years old or greater. I'm gonna need a lot fresher data if I'm going to do any sort of predictive analysis…"

"I gotcha, buddy." The older Eppes dropped an additional file on the stack. "It's thin, but it's everything we have on Vincetti's movements so far."

"Okay," Charlie said, reaching for it. "Between this guy's most current actions and his past habits I may be able to put together something."

"Okay, Charlie," Don said, "that's good."

"So this guy," Charlie continued, still thumbing through the thin folio. "He wanted to, you know, kill you, years ago, in Albuquerque?"

"Nah," Don said. "Not then. His dad did, though. My F.B.I. testimony put Vincetti, Jr. in prison for life. Vincetti, Sr. had the hit out on me for doing that."

Charlie's eyebrows were all the way up. "Then what happened?"

"Well, I holed up here, like I told you."

"Witness Protection."

"Until they finally put Senior in prison for racketeering. His organization pretty much fell apart, and he died in prison a couple years ago."

"Vincetti, Jr. blames you for that," Charlie said.

"Yeah, I guess so."

**********Numb3rs***********

Six hours and a large stack of area maps later, Charlie laid down his pen, shut his laptop and stretched. Don stepped out of the kitchenette where he'd been microwaving two bowls of ready-to-eat Chinese noodles, and eyed his younger brother. "Hey, buddy," he said. "Dinner is served."

"Good," Charlie said. "I'm starved. My brain has completely burned through those pancakes, I think."

Don suppressed a grin. Charlie had been so deep in his work that he'd waited to interrupt him until his own stomach had become insistent. He set the bowls down, careful not to slosh them on his brother's scribblings, and sat down next to him. Don picked up the map on the top of the pile, which showed Alaska east of Anchorage. There was a series of dashed lines and circles on it, which he traced with one finger, studying it. "Your best guess, huh?"

Charlie nodded. "Not exactly a guess. I based it on the bus route data and my analysis of Vincetti, Jr.'s evasion tactics when you chased him down the first time. The unknown variable is how much he was able to glean about your own movements six years ago. But we have to assume that somehow he found out you were in Cicely, so that narrows his target area considerably. I believe he'll make his base somewhere near here." He indicated a rural highway stretch with a large number of little-used logging roads. "It's close to a town, but hard to search by air, and within striking distance of Cicely. He's probably going to try to reconnoiter this town without being noticed by local law enforcement."

"Okay," Don said. "Thanks, Charlie. This really helps narrow things." He picked up the noodle bowl and stirred it. "Now that I have an area to cover, I can call in reinforcements for a manhunt."

Charlie raised his eyebrows but said nothing, attacking his own bowl of food. Now that he had finished his analysis, there was time to think about its implications. Somewhere not too far off was a man who wanted Don dead. _A hunter, just as much as one who was being hunted._ He suddenly very much wished they were both on a plane back to L.A.

There was a knock on the door to outside. Don rose and checked the peephole, then opened it. "Hey, O'Connell," he said with a grin. "You're back early."

"My fare back from Anchorage cancelled," she said, moving inside. She set a couple of brown paper bags on the kitchenette peninsula. "So while I was down there I shopped."

"Oh, hey. Thanks," Don said, reaching in the bags. "You didn't have to." He pulled out a box of dry mix. "Latkes." He laughed. "You remembered."

"That Christmas?" she said, in a tone that was almost a challenge. "How could I forget? I also brought those little peanut butter cookies you used to like."

He smiled. "Really, O'Connell. I owe you one." He continued emptying the bags into the refrigerator and cupboards. "So I guess the truck held up on you."

"So far, so good," she said. "Well, I guess I'll leave you two to your work," she added, eyeing Charlie and the mound of files on the table. "If you need anything—"

Don nodded. "I'll know where to find you."

******Numb3rs******

The next morning, Charlie slipped past Don, who was still asleep on the couch, peacefully, one arm slung over the edge so that its fingertips just brushed the floor; and quietly opened the door to the outside steps. The sun was already bright, and Charlie was of a mind to observe what he could of his brother's adopted town in the morning quiet, from the vantage point of the porch. He was surprised to find it already occupied. Maggie O'Connell was seated, hands around her drawn-up knees, staring at the sky, he thought, with its cold white cloud cover. He took a similar position next to her, curious about what she might say. For a moment, she said nothing; then, she spoke without turning her head. "You really are brothers, aren't you."

He chuckled. "Yes." He wondered what had convinced her. She answered his unasked question.

"Joel liked to sit and watch the sky, too. Once he got used to there being so much of it."

Charlie considered. "You knew my brother really well, didn't you?"

"For five years," she said stoutly. "Although, he never told me he had a brother. The only family I ever heard about was his parents and an aunt in Queens. And a girlfriend at Columbia University."

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "He told you about Aunt Irene? Don hates Aunt Irene."

"He made her sound like his only living relative. And he doesn't hate her cooking."

Charlie thought about that. "You may know my brother better than I do," he admitted, thinking about the unknown university girlfriend. "We've really only been close the last couple of years."

She shrugged. "Well, I thought I knew him back then," she said, ruefully. "He kept you a secret, and now he's a law enforcement officer." Her eye-roll seemed to suggest she was more unsettled than the mere words themselves gave reason for, and Charlie wondered.

"Maybe it's none of my business," he asked, watching her, but were you and Don ever…?"

She shook her head quickly. "No, we were never really a couple."

Charlie knew he wasn't as socially astute as many people, but he was pretty sure there was something else behind the words and the shake. _Not a couple, but… "_ Another secret," he murmured.

"Yes," she said, following his train of reasoning. "Joel—or Don—seems to have kept a lot of them." The words were challenging in tone. "He's never talked about me, has he?"

Charlie shook his head. "I think," he said, "Don doesn't talk about things if they're important to him."

Maggie laughed softly. "He talks about everything else."

"Listen," Charlie asked, changing the subject to his other burning question. "Don was practicing medicine here, right?"

"Yup."

"Was he, you know, was he good at it?"

Maggie's laugh was infectious. "Not at first," she said. "Oh, I'm sure he was technically competent, but his bedside manner was appalling. He didn't want to be here, you know, and he sort of took that out on all his patients."

"I'll bet," Charlie said, trying to imagine.

"And he was grumpy all the time for months. Most of us thought he'd never settle in to Cicely."

"But he did," Charlie prompted.

"He did," Maggie said, "and a lot of us were just as surprised when he left suddenly. Cicely is…" she stopped and laughed again, a sparkling laugh that Charlie could imagine swaying his brother's emotions,— _not a couple, but_ —"Cicely is magic. It gets in your blood. When Joel left it was like he'd proven himself in some quest, I guess," she added, "and he had to go back to 'civilization' to apply some lesson from it. But I always figured he'd come back."

Charlie thought about that in companionable silence for a moment. Don had his reasons for staying where he was in L.A., not the least of which was Charlie and their father, Alan, which he'd never shared with her. Before that, Quantico and then Albuquerque. _Knowing his brother, it was just as likely he was running from something on his return to 'civilization' as he had been when he left it._ "And now he has come back," Charlie said, instead.

Maggie O'Connell nodded. "Cicely hasn't changed, but Joel has, I think."

 _******Numb3rs******_

Don stepped out on the porch in time to catch the tail end of Maggie's statement. He looked around the street in an instinctive, sharp-eyed safety assessment before announcing his presence to the conversant pair. "Charlie, Maggie, I see you're getting to know each other." He grinned as his little brother startled out of an apparent deep focus and scrambled to his feet.

"Don. I thought you weren't up yet."

"Who could sleep through all that chattering outside?" Don countered in friendly argument, running a hand through hair he knew still proclaimed his recent residence on the couch cushions. "Besides, I'm cooking breakfast. Pancakes. You're welcome to join, O'Connell," he added, reaching a hand to help her up.

She gave him a skeptical look but accepted his help. "And risk my life to your cooking?"

"Hey," Charlie pointed out. "Don's gotten very good at microwaving things lately."

"Hey…"

Charlie fended off his brother's shove. "Don, you know I'm not actually big on pancakes. And I had them yesterday."

"They're good for you," Don said reasonably. "Besides, they're what we have, and you can smother them with syrup like you used to do Mom's. We have a long day to prepare for."

******Numb3rs******


End file.
